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Monday, October 17, 2011

31 Day Nail Art Challenge: Glitter Nails

This was my husband's idea for glitter nails a la Halloween motif. I love it so much! Great idea, honey! I guess you could call this a continuation of the "Tinkerbell on a Murder Spree" nails from a few days ago... She left her victim in the alleyway surrounded by pixie dust!

It's a chalk outline (a glitter chalk outline) of a dead body next to a pool of (glittery) blood. Wow, my hubs is crazy brilliant.

I started this mani with a base polish of this grey shade from Sally Hansen. I did not do clean up yet, because I was adding layers and doing a lot of other messy things to the mani before I was finished, so why waste time with lots of clean up after each stage. OH! And this is ONE coat. I love it!

Next step was sponged on black polish. I wanted this to look like concrete, or a dirty alleyway. It kind of works.

I brushed on a matte topcoat to help with the concrete idea, then taped up my middle and ring fingers to get ready for some blood splatters.

I followed a method I saw Jen of The PolishAholic do on her site. I used a small drinking straw and dipped it in polish, then blew a short blast of air through the straw to get the splatter effect. See Jen's site for more information on this technique.

I cleaned up the nails (and sadly messed up one of the splatters in the process, note to self: don't tape nails quite as closely next time) then added the "chalk" outline in white acrylic paint.

I added a bit of red glitter polish to the blood splatter to make it a bit more blingy, and then started adding a holographic glitter polish over the chalk outline. My husband will attest to the fact that I was giggling like crazy while I did this. So funny!

Here is an outside picture of the nails so you can see how holographic and sparkly these nails really were. I love it!

I used quite a few polishes for this mani, and only one acrylic paint (usually the opposite for my manis). Polishes used in this manicure: Essie All In One basecoat, Revlon Top Speed in Hazy, Wet 'n Wild Black Creme (sponged on), Warpaint Beauty Matte topcoat (from Hot Topic), Revlon Raven Red for the blood splatters, Fright Night Claw Polish Voodoo for the red glitter on the blood, and Love & Beauty Silver holo glitter polish for the chalk outline. No topcoat (besides the matte topcoat). I really like this matte topcoat.

Tomorrow's nails: Half Moons! What a perfect challenge for Halloween nails. See you tomorrow!

Have to say when I first saw this-my thought was "what a mess" but then I read what it's supposed to be and see the outline and it's freakin genius!!! So I take back by bad thought!! Your husband is very clever indeed!